Cross City Walks

I was reading an article by Will Self and thinking it was a bit psychogeographically which reminded me that Self had this thing he did when he flew into a city of walking from the airport to his final destination which I blogged back in 2006. Partly this was he’d quit heroin and had replaced it with walking obscene distances but it was also because this allowed him to see the city from a different vantage point and track how it changes from motorway-laced countryside to urban downtown.

“People don’t know where they are anymore,” he said, adding: “In the post-industrial age, this is the only form of real exploration left. Anyone can go and see the Ituri pygmy, but how many people have walked all the way from the airport to the city?”

I was also reminded of one of Bill Drummond’s psychogeographic exercises where he wrote “BILL” across his A-Z of London and then followed the lines, walking his name. Again, this isn’t so he can say “I walked my name” but to force a restriction upon himself, to say “I will experience the city through rigid yet random parameters”. And then to record that experience and see what it reveals about the place. (I can’t find the original piece online but I suspect it’s somewhere in his book 45.)

This is, of course, what Jon Bounds’ Eleven Bus project is all about, encouraging people to go all the way around Birmingham’s Outer Circle bus route and experience the city in a new way. The project takes place every November 11th from 11am (see what he did there?) but the framework of the Outer Circle is, I feel, too great to be restricted to this one idea.

When I did the 11-11-11-11 thing last year I didn’t take the bus. I cycled and it gave me a much better sense of how the city changes, or indeed doesn’t change, as you move around it. But I was struck by how do-able cycling 26 miles was when you stopped every quarter mile to photograph a bus stop. Sure, I was exhausted the next day, mainly because I’m super-unfit at the moment, but it wasn’t an endurance thing at the time.

So with all that in my mind pot I’ve come up with a project I may well have a go at this Spring: Cross City Walks.

The idea is you pick a spot on the Outer Circle bus route, preferably at random, and draw a line that crosses the City Centre and stops on the opposite side of the Outer Circle. Here’s two I drew earlier.

You then walk this line. Hmm, maybe the project should be called Walk The Line. Or maybe not.

As soon as you start walking an immediate problem will occur. The Line will not correspond with the roads, especially in the suburbs with the cul-de-sacs and canals and such. For example, here’s how you’d walk a section of the line in Handsworth:

The Line only covers 3/4 mile but the route is double that. Especially when you include the two rules I just made up – that every intersection of The Line with a road must be passed and you cannon double back unless the road is a dead end.

There may well be more rules. And if you do this you’re welcome to make up your own.

The diametre of the Outer Circle is about six – seven miles, depending on where you start. Using the above as a terribly unscientific formula I reckon a cross city walk would be between 15-20 miles. Which is perfectly do-able in one day even when you’re stopping to take photos and record your thoughts.

I hereby submit this project to the hive-mind.

– — – –

A little later and I’ve decided on my first route. Using a random number generator and my Outer Circle TTV photos I landed on the Acock’s Green Bus Garage, the spiritual and actual home of the Number 11 bus and thus the perfect place to start a project.

I drew a line from there, through St Paul’s Phillips’s Cathedral in the city centre and out to Soho Road in Handsworth. And then I mapped out a road route to see how far it actually is. Turns out that thanks to a freak straight line through Digbeth and the Jewellery Quarter it’s only 10.5 miles, less if I can cut through the parks and industrial estates. Pretty reasonable for a first go.

The Google map isn’t saving properly so here’s a screen grab:

Now, I just need a date.